This disclosure relates to energy management, and more particularly to energy management of household consumer appliances. The disclosure finds particular application to cooking appliances and is particularly advantageously applied to such appliances with electromechanically controlled oven heating elements.
Currently utilities charge a flat rate, but with increasing cost of fuel prices and high energy usage at certain parts of the day, utilities have to buy more energy to supply customers during peak demand. Utility companies have to find ways to temporarily provide for this higher energy use, which comes at great expense to utility companies. Consequently, utilities are charging higher rates during peak demand. If the utility company can communicate that power is in high demand, home appliances, such as ranges that are typically used during peak time (later afternoon), could notify the consumer that demand is high and reduce peak power usage of the appliance and allow the utility company to shed load. This “demand response” capability in cooking appliances spread over thousands of customers would allow the utility company to shed a significant amount of peak load.
One proposed third party solution is to provide a system where a control module “switches” the actual energy supply to the appliance or control unit on and off. However, there is no active control beyond the mere on/off switching.
While electronic controls can change or limit duty cycles in response to a “high demand”, many ranges use electromechanical power switching devices that are not electronic. In such ranges the electromechanical control of the oven heaters is provided by thermostatic switching devices. This system aims to provide a way to reduce peak and average power consumption of such electromechanically controlled oven heaters with minimal changes to conventional electromechanically controlled cooking appliance design, in a cost effective manner. By implementing simpler control systems, this system is able to react to either a discrete normal demand or higher demand signal. Therefore, this system is a simple, low cost method to shed both peak and average power that does not require expensive fully electronic range control systems.
One method for providing low-cost reduction of peak and average power is to implement a simple demand side management “DSM” control device in an existing electromechanical appliance that will delay, adjust, or disable power consuming elements to reduce maximum power consumption. However, such a DSM add-on device will generally cut off the power to an entire heater. Therefore, there exists a need for reducing peak power consumption without eliminating an entire heater.